François Jullien | L'efficacité des transformations silencieuses (EXTRAIT 1)

Full interview: https://shs.cairn.info/l-efficacite-d... Thinking in Europe has long been governed by the Greek legacy: dividing, defining, aiming, imposing a form. This grammar of purpose has shaped our understanding of action, planning, and disruption. To this established way of doing things, the detour through China opens another way of understanding: discerning the propensity of things, working with the natural inclination of situations, and making the right move. This shift overturns our idea of ​​effectiveness, moving from project to propensity, from control to adjustment, from the spectacular to the discreet. From this perspective, the event is no longer a shock but the culmination of silent transformations, continuous changes that occur openly without us initially grasping their significance. Learning to see these minute metamorphoses shifts our relationship to time, self-governance, and collective action. Hence the need for de-coincidence: creating a crack in our assumptions and habits to reopen the door to initiative. De-coincidence is not about fleeing, but about loosening our automatic responses, freeing up space for existence, and rekindling our appreciation for the world through attention to the subtle. This journey leads to the idea of ​​a second life, not to remake one's life but to reclaim it from within, to redefine the ordinary, to reorient one's actions, until, finally, one truly lives. In short, a completely different understanding of what practicing strategy, management, and governing, and more generally, exercising power, means. For over thirty years, philosopher and sinologist François Jullien has been developing a body of work that challenges our assumptions. Professor Emeritus at Paris Cité University, he held the chair on otherness at the College of Global Studies. Uncovering a different kind of intelligence in action through the lens of China, he explores the gap as a method: thinking in the in-between, decoupling the automatisms of language, embracing the propensity of situations rather than imposing a plan upon them. This work invites a truly operative philosophy, because it is attentive to the discreet and the precise rather than the spectacular.